Cold Moon Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.0

Cold Moon Blu-ray Movie Review

"You don't look tired..."

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown March 6, 2024

It has to be difficult to craft a story that reveals its killer early into a whodunit. Left with little mystery, a film like Cold Moon is forced to rely on how well it can create, build and maintain suspense and a sense of dread; no small task for a project backed by the best of filmmakers and casts, but one made that much more harrowing for a modestly budgeted thriller with only a few familiar-faced character actors in its roster. And at its most effective, Cold Moon offers enough suspense to keep its audience in tow. Unfortunately, at its worst it's little more than a southern gothic snooze that adds too much weight to its supporting cast's shoulders. With little left to the imagination (real, supernatural or otherwise), it's worthy of less and less leniency the closer it comes to its climax and the more it sheds the tension that makes its earlier introductions more interesting than its inevitable revelations.

In the backwoods forests and fields of Florida, teenage girl Margaret (Sara Catherine Bellamy) is found murdered, discarded in a river tied to a bicycle. Her hometown of Babylon is instantly embroiled in intrigue as Sheriff Ted Hale (Frank Whaley) tries to track down the killer, unbeknownst to him Nathan Redfield (Josh Stewart), the son of wealthy, influential banker James Redfield (Christopher Lloyd). As Nathan begins plotting to kill the rest of Margaret's family, the current owners of oil-rich land, he also works to frame high school principal Walter Perry (Marcus Lyle Brown) for the crimes. But when the Larkins begin returning from the grave, one by one -- or is Nathan merely hallucinating? -- the would-be serial killer is forced to elude more than Sheriff Hale's long arm of the law. Written and directed by Griff Furst and co-written by Jack Snyder, the film also stars Candy Clark, Rachele Brooke Smith, Robbie Kay, Madison Wolfe, Chester Rushing, Joe Chrest and Laura Cayouette, and features a distracting cameo from Tommy Wiseau.

I understand what Furst and Snyder are going for with Cold Moon's off-ramps into ghostly shenanigans. They are, after all, adapting a novel penned in 1980 by Michael McDowell, best known as the screenwriter for Tim Burton's Beetlejuice. But there's a jarring disconnect between the film's decidedly serious serial killer thriller trappings and the appearance of practically realized ghosts, which despite the filmmakers' finest efforts, come across as more hokey than terrifying. Watching Stewart struggle with visions of rotting prosthetics made me laugh a few too many times, and I found myself musing (more than once) just how hard of a time directors have had bring the dead to life on screen. More than just fx wonkiness, though, the supernatural beasties have little business in the matters at hand. I never bought that the Redfields were being haunted by the Larkins, nor that Whaley was all that threatening of a pursuer. Scenes with the Sheriff felt like tangents from the central story of a sociopath plagued by spirits. It didn't help that Stewart's cold-sweat killer doesn't seem like he'd be all that hard to escape. His plotting and planning are full of holes. Even the most dim-witted victim should've spotted his intent a mile away.

Click here for a slightly more positive take on Cold Moon, which Brian Orndorf writes "has its moments, offering odd, snake-infested visuals and creepy encounters." Adding, "it’s just a shame that its highlights are mostly contained to the first act."

Cold Moon Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Blu-ray release of Cold Moon features a strong 1080p/AVC-encoded video transfer, even though it bears the visual hallmarks of a low-budget digital thriller. Colors are subdued, sometimes to the point of being diluted, but there's still welcome life teeming in the earthy forests where Nathan conducts his murderous business. Saturation are quite striking, though, and skin tones remain warm and lifelike throughout. Likewise, the occasional splash of primaries do pop and black levels are nice and rich, lending an ominous quality to supernatural/hallucination sequences. Detail is terrific, with sharply resolved textures and clean edges. Clarity is a little wobbly when the lights go down and shadows sometimes look a bit too bright, leading to some delineation artificiality, but it traces back to the film's cinematography and color grading rather than the Uncork'd encode. Thankfully I didn't notice any significant banding or errant noise to the image, leaving this one only a mere step or two shy of a higher score.

Cold Moon Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

It always strikes me as strange that, in 2024, we still live in a land where lossy audio pops up on Blu-ray releases. But here we are. Fortunately, Cold Moon's Dolby Digital 5.1 surround track offers a decent mix, only drawing attention to its lossy nature in the film's more intense sequences. Dialogue is clean and clear, dynamics are solid, and LFE output is more than adequate, adding some much-needed heft to supernatural encounters. Rear speaker activity does a fine job too of bringing the Florida countryside into your home theater, with plenty of environmental ambience upping the creepy-crawly-critters-in-the-distance factor by at least three. Pans are reasonably smooth as well. My biggest issues were, first, one too many front-heavy sequences and, second, that patented lack of clarity brought on by a tip-top lossless track. Otherwise, no huge complaints here.

Cold Moon Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary - Writer/director Griff Furst chats freely about the film, its writing, casting, location scouting, and production, as well as the origins of Curmudgeon Films, which he founded with his father, Stephen (my favorite Curmudgeon flick being You Might Be the Killer).

• Making Cold Moon (HD, 7 minutes) - This much too brief featurette goes behind-the-scenes but offers far less insight than Furst's commentary, amounting to little more than your typical talking-heads, clip-heavy, occasionally fly-on-the-wall glimpse at the production.

• B-Roll Footage (HD, 13 minutes) - Additional behind the scenes footage.

• Deleted Scenes (HD, 11 minutes) - Ten scenes, all wisely trimmed from the final cut of the film.

Cold Moon Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Cold Moon has some interesting elements but the execution isn't up to snuff. A B-picture at best, it struggles to infuse its mystery and killer's rampage with menace or intrigue, leaving only one question -- hallucinations or supernatural encounters? -- which doesn't turn out to be gripping enough to sustain a feature film. Its Blu-ray release is at least a solid one, with a strong video presentation, solid audio (despite not offering a lossless track) and a decent assortment of extras.